Only 25 % graduates employable: Nasscom

NAGPUR: The IT-BPO industry is one of the pillars of our economy with an increasing portion of our population now getting employed in it. Currently the IT-BPO industry employs nearly 2.5 million people. Its contribution to national GDP has grown to an estimated 6.4 per cent in 2011 financial year. The higher education system in India produces 3.7 million graduates annually. But IT's premier trade association says hardly 25 per cent of these graduates are employable in the IT-BPO sector. "Of the general pool of graduates across all streams only 25 per cent have employable skills. When we look specifically at tech graduates then only 35-40 per cent are readily employable" said Nasscom's education director Dr Sandhya Chintala. Speaking to TOI over the phone from Noida, Chintala said the hiring trend in IT industry is changing. "Earlier we hired a lot of people with specialized skills, but now we look for people with both generic and specialized skills. There are a lot of generic skills needed in the industry now. For example if we keep 23 weeks of training for employees, then 16 weeks are specifically for generic skills". Though many graduates have generic skills, it is not up to the level which is required by the industry, she added further. "Students who graduate from premier institutes like the IITs are really good. But not many of them are going into product development as we would like. The industry globally is updating itself very fast and our education system is not keeping pace with it. The role of IITs is to get the graduates trained and ready for the job world," said Chintala. According to her, universities in US churn out graduates whose 'job-ready' skills are much higher compared to that of ours. "They have a different assessment system all together. We are more theoretical based while theirs is focused more on problem solving. In India even the government-run C-DAC courses are not recognized by the industry" said Chintala. This is because there is no compatibility between the course and industry requirements. Chintala feels that C-DACs have not kept pace with the growth in the industry since there are a lot of bureaucratic hurdles involved as well. Shashikant Chaudhary of GlobalLogic Inc, a Nagpur-based subsidiary of a US company, said despite the city having as much as 56 engineering and around 12 BCA/MCA colleges it is indeed difficult to get a right candidate. In general out of every 100 candidates only 25 are employable from these technical institutes, which is lesser than the Nasscom estimate of 40%. The ratio goes down further when searching for candidates for top jobs like product research and development, where only 15 out of the 100 candidates are employable, added Chaudhary. "Though we get enough candidates they are not suitable to be deployed right away and need to be given a pre-induction training. This only highlights the lack of employability of the freshers. It is not that the candidates lack calibre but it is the pattern of education which needs to be changed. The pre-induction training shows that the candidates have a flair for the job but do not get proper exposure at their respective educational institutes," said Samir Bendre of Persistent Systems also having a unit in Nagpur.